Dale's Quails

10/14/2026

Putting the farm to bed… without putting the soil to sleep

Fall here isn't the end of the season. It's the start of next spring. This week we're juggling a lot at once: harvesting the last of the warm-weather crops (peppers, tomatoes, beans, herbs), swapping the bug cloth for frost cloth, getting the cold-hardy crops ready for the cold (if it ever shows up), spreading compost and worm-casting tea, and seeding cover crop cocktails.

The goal is simple to say and hard to do. We want to be as ready for spring as possible, keep harvesting efficiently, and build our soil biology up instead of mining it out.

We rely on our core principles to guide our actions and practices.

LIVING ROOTS, AS LONG AS POSSIBLE
Soil life feeds on what roots leak into the ground(exudates). No roots means no food, so we try to keep something growing in every bed for as much of the year as we can. Bare soil gets a week or two at most before something goes back in.

KEEP THE SOIL ARMORED
Bare ground bakes, erodes, crusts, and loses carbon(carbon being EXTREMELY important). Mulch, crop residue, and cover crops keep it covered. When a crop finishes, we cut it at the soil line and leave the roots in the ground to rot in place. That feeds the soil life and leaves channels for water and the next set of roots.

COVER CROP COCKTAILS
This fall the tomato beds are getting a no-till mix of nine species: winter wheat, triticale, hairy vetch, Austrian peas, daikon radish, berseem and crimson clover, and mustard. Each one has a job:
• The grasses build biomass and a big fibrous root system.
• The legumes pull nitrogen out of the air for next year's heavy feeders.
• Daikon drills down to break up compaction.
• Mustard and the clovers add diversity above and below ground.
Part of the mix dies over winter and becomes mulch. The wheat, triticale, and vetch keep living roots in the soil right through until spring.

RELAY CROPPING AND UNDERSOWING
We don't wait for a bed to clear. In the cabbage and wax bean beds, we broadcast the cover crop right into the standing crops while the soil is still warm. That way the cover is already up when we harvest, and the soil never sits empty. Next summer, after the last hoeing, we'll undersow crimson clover beneath the tomatoes so a second crop is already growing under the first. We will be experimenting next year with different greens below our tomatoes in a few beds and not just all clover.

NO-TILL TERMINATION
Next spring we won't till the cover under. We'll scythe or mow it at the right stage, with the vetch in full bloom and the grains headed out (usually late May). We'll leave all of it on the bed as mulch and plant the tomatoes straight into it.

ROTATION WITH A PURPOSE
Every cover crop is chosen for the crop that comes after it. Nitrogen-rich legume mixes go before tomatoes. The garlic gets mulch only. The onion beds get oats only. We keep peas and other nitrogen fixing species off the ground that's going to potatoes to help prevent scab. Rotation isn't just about moving crop families around. It's about setting up the next crop to do well.

COMPANION PLANTING
We mix plants that help each other in the same beds, like cilantro tucked in with brassicas and alongside cucumbers. Flowers and herbs bring in the beneficial insects that do our pest control for free.

FEEDING BIOLOGY, NOT JUST PLANTS
Compost and worm-casting tea inoculate the soil with microbes, fungi, and the critters that cycle nutrients. We'd rather feed the soil life and let it feed the plants.

Why bother? Because the soil is the farm. Every year that we skip a tillage pass or a synthetic input and give the soil more roots and more cover, it holds more water, grows healthier plants, and costs us less. This is how we stay productive and profitable on a small piece of ground. This is us giving back more than we take.

THE STAND IS STILL STOCKED DAILY
All this fall prep doesn't slow down the harvest. The farmstand is still restocked with fresh produce every day, and it's shifting over to the cool-season lineup: greens, brassicas, cabbage, and taters. The same soil we're building for next spring is feeding you right now.

If you're thinking about cutting back on tillage or synthetic inputs, start small. Cover one bed this fall. Leave the roots in. Keep it covered. Watch what happens to that soil over a couple of seasons. It's a slow conversation with the land, and it pays you back.

Questions about what we're doing, or want to swap notes? Ask away.....we love talking dirt. Its also a great way to hear new ideas and come up with practices that are both economically and ecologically sound.

Dale's Quails Acres
Grown the Regenerative Way
dalesquailsacres.com

10/07/2026

A quick update from the farm and the shop.

We got behind on early September orders, and we know that wait has not been fun. We’re caught back up to our posted lead time, or within a couple days of it, for this Friday’s pickup. If you’ve been waiting, thank you for hanging in there — we’re pushing to get the rest out the door.

Our plates are pretty full.. we’re still harvesting, getting cover crops in, running the farmstand/csa and markets, and working through some supply issues on the cage side. Limited kit stock currently to help us get caught back up. Blending the quail business with the farm already has us spread thin, and lately there’s been more on the place than the usual harvest-and-shop mix. We’ve been working with another family on some.....training.....and there are a few big additions coming to the farm shortly. We’ll say more when it’s time.

And for the first time in our lifetime, we are able to harvest deer ON OUR OWN property! For us..this is huge as I usually spend days away from home filling our deer freezer each year.

We’re also a few days behind on email. If you need us quickly, a text or call is the better route. I plan to have this week’s emails addressed by Friday.

We appreciate and truly feel thankful for everyone who’s stuck with us through the hiccups and the delays. We’ll keep catching up — and the place is about to look a little different😏

— Dale’s Quails Acres Team

09/07/2026

Happy Labor Day!
The grill called and we answered!

Today only — 2 for $1

Sugar Buns sweet corn
Bell peppers
Grilling / blister peppers

We’ll be restocking the stand ALL DAY so the baskets don’t go empty mid-cookout.

No sprays. Picked here. Ready for the fire.

Open 8am–dusk
W2585 Longmeadow Dr, Lafayette (Elkhorn)

See whats in at the stand on our new website!

Dale’s Quails Acres
Grown the Regenerative Way

09/06/2026

The official taste-tester has spoken!

Sugar Buns sweet corn is in. Small ear. Ridiculous sugar. No synthetics. Sown,grown and harvested by hand.

$1 an ear · 13 for $10

Frying peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, beans, cukes, Yukon Golds — the stand is loaded for the grill.

Want a ready-made haul?
See what’s in today and grab a Farmers Friend mixed box, a custom ½-bushel ($35, you pick 5+ items) or get bulk discounts on the new site.

dalesquailsacres.com

Open 8am–7pm
W2585 Longmeadow Dr, Lafayette (Elkhorn)
Dale’s Quails Acres
"Grown the Regenerative Way"

09/02/2026

Did some farm interviews this morning with our crew in order to get an idea of how we are doing....

09/01/2026

Friends,supporters and neighbors

We did not expect this kind of welcome.
The stand has been busier than we planned for, and we are honestly grateful. Thank you for coming out, for sending neighbors, for choosing food grown here in the dirt our farm is working to restore. It means a lot.

We put up a website so we can keep up with you without letting the produce sit. It helps us restock the stand, pack Custom Boxes accurately, and — most important — keep what you take home fresh.

What’s listed is what’s coming off the plants, not what’s been waiting in a cooler for weeks.
It also helps us run two lives at once: the cage business and the farm. One less clipboard in the truck. A little more time in the rows and shop.

If you want to see what’s on the table before you drive over:

dalesquailsacres.com

Stand is still self serve (unless you need assistance) , daily 8am–7pm
Longmeadow Drive, Elkhorn / Lafayette, WI

No sprays. No chemicals. Just real food for our community — and we look forward to growing more of it for you.

See you at the garden!

— Dale’s Quails Acres
"Grown the Regenerative Way"

Custom harvest boxes from a family-run regenerative farm in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Pick five to ten things you eat. No sprays. No prepaid mystery share.

08/31/2026

"Rams are unsafe and you should be cautious around them..."

Yea...should probably tell Ragnar that...

08/28/2026

True farm to table isn’t a restaurant slogan....

It’s 6:30 in the morning and the kids are already in the rows.

We hand-pick for about three hours. Most days we are done by 9 or 9:30. Cloudy mornings we can stretch it. Hot sun we don’t. That window is the whole point.

Overnight the plants refill. With the sun down they stop dumping water through their leaves, and the roots keep pushing moisture up. By dawn the cells are packed tight. That’s turgor — the snap in a cucumber, the crunch in a bean, the reason a tomato picked cool stays firm on your counter instead of collapsing by Tuesday.
Heat does the opposite. Once the sun is on the fruit, water starts leaving the plant faster than it comes in. Tissue warms. Respiration speeds up. Volatile oils that carry flavor in herbs start to flash off. You can pick the same plant at noon and it will look fine in the box and taste flatter two days later. We learned that the hard way. Now we pick while the crop is still cool, get it into the shade, and let it ride to the stand instead of cooking in the field.

Sugars are part of it, just not the cartoon version. Plants make sugar in the light and move it around all day — into fruit, into stems, into roots, into overnight reserves. What morning picking actually protects is the water, the crispness, the aroma, and the shelf life. Flavor follows that. Nutrition follows that. We check it with a refractometer (that third picture).

Brix is a fast read on soluble solids — mostly sugars, plus the other dissolved bits that make produce taste like food instead of wet cardboard. High Brix doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from soil that is alive.
That’s why we keep chasing regenerative work instead of a spray program. Heal the soil and the plant can fill itself overnight. Skip the soil and you can pick at dawn all you want and still get empty fruit.

Our goal is simple: real food back on tables in this community. Not shipped, not gassed, not sitting in a cooler for a week. Picked this morning. On the stand the same day.

Farmstand is open 8am to dusk
Longmeadow Drive, Elkhorn / Lafayette.
Grab what’s out, or ask about a custom box.

— Dale, Bonnie, and the whole crew

08/24/2026

Mistakes... failures and why we are OK with them..

Last cutting taught us a hard (and expensive) lesson.
We didn’t let the hay cure long enough… and we lost most of it to mold.

This time around we’re doing it differently. After the drum mower lays it down in those tight little windrows, we’re spreading it wide open with the tedder. Drum mowers are tough and efficient, but they leave the hay stacked up so the underside never sees the sun or the breeze. Spreading it out right away lets the air and sunshine hit every stem, speeds the dry-down, and (hopefully) keeps the mold away this round.

And right there in the middle of all of it is our littlest farmer, hands on the wheel, learning the same lessons we are.

Neither Bonnie nor I grew up on farms. We’re figuring this out as we go—making mistakes, adjusting, and trying again. The kids see every bit of it. They watch us lose a cutting, shrug it off, talk about what went wrong, and get right back out there the next time.

But it’s not just the big failures like spoiled hay. It’s the everyday ones too.
Mislabeling a bag of seeds and discovering it only when it’s time to plant.
Grabbing the wrong piece while packaging a cage kit and having to reship that peice.
Planting something in the wrong spot or forgetting to document a change in the soil.

Those small mistakes matter just as much. They teach the same core values: slow down, double-check your work, own the error, fix it, and move forward without drama. Our kids see us handle the little mess-ups the same way we handle the big ones—and that consistency is what sticks.

Resilience, attention to detail, problem-solving, and the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you can bounce back… those aren’t things you can lecture into a child. They have to watch them lived out in the ordinary work of the farm, the shop, and the garden.

So here’s to imperfect hay, imperfect cage kits, imperfect seed labels, imperfect parents, and the little hands that are learning right alongside us.

Here’s to the next cutting (and the next cage, and the next planting) being a little better than the last… and the kids growing a little stronger because of it.

08/23/2026

The stand is stocked, the soil is working, and we’re still over here trying to grow more than just vegetables.

We’re growing a little community of people who care about real food, self-reliance, and leaving the land better than we found it.

No sprays. No commercial fertilizers. Just compost, living soil, daily harvests, and a whole lot of trial and error that somehow keeps turning into nutrient-dense food.

If you’re into quail, gardening, farming, or just eating food that actually tastes like it came from the ground… you’re in the right place.

Follow along so you don’t miss:
• What’s fresh at the stand
• Farm happenings
• Future on-farm events we’re planning
• The good, the messy, and the regenerative side of doing this for real

Sharing this page is one of the easiest ways to help us keep building that community. Tag a friend who would get it or share to all of em, especially our local supporters. Your feedback has a huge impact on the crops we grow.

Farmstand is open daily 8am–dusk on Longmeadow Dr in Elkhorn / Lafayette.

Come grab some food. Stay for the conversation. Let’s keep building this thing together.

Dale’s Quails Acres
"Grown the regenerative way"